So, here I am at the seaside. Today the weather has been endless torrential rain. Welcome to the British summer.

Thankfully the forecast for tomorrow is mostly dry, and I have been told that it has been very dry in Brighton of late so the water should mostly sink in and not leave the park we are using a quagmire. Unfortunately the forecast for Sunday is more torrential rain, so the Picnic on the Beach has been relocated to the Marlborough.

This evening’s event was the film festival at the Duke of York Picturehouse. They opened up with a film of Alice Denny reading a poem about last year’s Trans Pride, followed by the first episode of Heartichoke, a comedy series that Fox & Lewis are putting together. Watch the teaser here. The final support piece was a film about a trans activist from India which was much more positive that the “tragic hijra” stuff I’m used to seeing, though still a bit cliched.

The main entertainment for the evening was Kate Bornstein is a Queer and Pleasant Danger, a film about Kate’s life made by Sam Feder. I knew most of the story already, though you could have knocked me down with a feather when I found out that Kate was introduced to Sandy Stone by Janice Raymond, of all people. However, most of the audience were much less familiar with Kate’s life and work. The film ends with Kate still in the middle of her cancer crisis, so they added a little postscript to assure the audience that it all turned out alright in the end. Lots of people got rather emotional.

The thing that resonated most for me was when Kate talked about going on book tours these days and meeting loads of young people living happy trans lives — something that Kate and I could only dream about when we were that age. I know exactly what she means, and I was able to see a movie theatre packed full of exactly that sort of young person.

The Duke of York seats 280. We sold every seat, and could have sold more.

I’m now back at my hotel catching up on the day’s email. Fingers crossed that tomorrow’s weather is indeed fairly good.